This was interesting. We haven’t seen a weekday Tees puzzle for some time, and I certainly have never blogged one. I really struggled to get a handle on his style, which seems reminiscent of that of Nimrod, another setter I tend to struggle with. I look forward to hearing how others found this.

Across

1/17

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD – a long charade, I think, with FAR FROM THE + MADDING + CROW + D.

7/16

ANNE HATHAWAY – obviously ANNE HATH A WAY, but I don’t know who Will is, and assume him to be a contemporary cinema reference.

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In 7 dn it’s “Principal red route,” of course. I don’t know if it’s de rigueur to mention typos in the blog on a puzzle. But I can’t overlook something that has hit my eye.

Someone in the Comments section of another blog entry said that the reader knows that a typo is a typo is a typo and seemed to imply that we needn’t try to be clever. Yes, we can indeed ignore mistakes in those postings but as this is part of a quote from the clue, I thought we should fix it.

I thought this was one of the best puzzles of the year, with novel and imaginative clueing. Hard, yes, but worth all the time spent at it. Re REELED, I thought the definition included ‘was’ i.e.’was thrown back’ which seems OK for ‘reeled’. Re OUTDO, I think ‘Utd’ could refer to any United of which there are a few. Favourite clue, CORONER.

Re 8: Yes, there are a lot of United’s but George Best is forever associated with Manchester United, thus “Best” serves double duty. This was, for me, the pick of a bunch of excellent clues.A tough puzzle with concise clueing.

I found this easier than some of the Tees puzzles I’ve tackled in the past. There were quite a lot of CDs, which are the clues that normally cause me problems, but perhaps I’m getting a bit better at spotting them now.

A nice neat puzzle which I didn’t need to google or use word finders for. But a bit of serendipity came into it. I was left with 9a, 2d and 4d, unsolved. ‘Cross’ in the clue for 2d made me think there should be an ‘x’ in it. And for 9a I was trying to find an anagram of ‘an’ (for one) and ‘Dior’. Then I noticed in the rest of the grid both a ‘v’ and a ‘k’ and thought it might be a pangram. But in that case the only place for ‘q’ had to be the first letter of 9a, and it all fell into place – and no pangram. Talk about kicking oneself!

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